He was in, two cases elected to the states-general, by the clergy of Loudun and by that of Poitou.

As he was born on the 5th of September, 1585, he was but twenty-eight years old in 1614.

He had not been destined for the church, and he was pursuing a layman's course of study at the college of Navarre, under the name of the Marquis de Chillon, when his elder brother, Alphonse Louis du Plessis de Richelieu, became disgusted yith ecclesiastical life, turned Carthusian, and resigned the unpretending bishopric of Lucon in favor of his brother Armand, whom Henry IV.

nominated to it in 1605, instructing Cardinal du Perron, at that time his charge d'affaires at Rome, to recommend to Pope Paul V.that election which he had very much at heart.

The young prelate betook himself with so much ardor to his theological studies, that at twenty years of age he was a doctor, and maintained his theses in rochet and camail as bishop-nominate.